Events

The fifth season of concert series Metabonma for classical composed music is starting with a solo performance of the multiple prestigious award-winner German percussionist Vanessa Porter at Klub Gromka on 6 February, Tuesday at 8 pm.

Vanessa Porter (1992, Laupheim, Germany) has been the finalist of the World Marimba Competition (Stuttgart, 2012), one of the recipients of the German national scholarship, and the winner of the Young German Musicians’ Competition, after she received the title of national young musician. In 2016 Porter won the first prize and audience’s prize at the August-Everding competition in Munich.

As a soloist in chamber music she has collaborated with the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Young Euro Classics. She has performed with the Stuttgart Philharmonie Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra Ludwigsburg, Ulm Chamber Orchestra and the Südwind Wind Orchestra.

With her percussion quartet Daidalos she has received the first prize and special prize for the best performance of compulsory songs at the International Percussion Competition in Luxembourg in 2015. In February 2015 the quartet received the Bruno-Frey Prize which enabled the recording and the release of their first album with the music of Cage, Donatoni and Langui.

Together with her sister Jessica Porter, she received a prize at the online competition in Italy and the sponsorship of the Karl-Jegg Foundation at MIZ (Deutsches Musikinformationzentrum). She is currently a postgraduate student at the High School Of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart where she studied with Marta Klimasaro and Jürgen Spitschka. She also studied in London at the Royal Music Academy.

“Erik Mavrič is qualified painter who does not appear very frequently in the public artistic space, however, when he does, he usually puts on display an ouvre of monument qualities. He proved this already at his first larger solo exhibition at Krško Gallery, where he – under the joint title Who Is Stingy with Words, Lacks Bread… / Kdor besede špara, kruha strada… (2014) – presented a couple of monumental artworks. In the first one, entitled Garbage Bible, he copied the entire text of the Bible, in excerpts, onto the packaging left over from his daily shopping. In the second, entitled Golden Bread / Zlati kruh, he dried and gilded about 400 kilos of bread. Another artwork that belongs within this frame is Erik’s Room / Erikova soba in the Hiša kulture (House Of Culture), in Pivka (2017), a permanent wall painting that came about in the way that the artist covered all the walls of a smaller gallery space entirely with a crayon, as a »seismograph« of visual noting of activities, taking place in this particular space.

What all the mentioned artworks have in common and what connects them with his most recent one, introduced in the present exhibition, is – in its very basis – a simple, yet long-running, monotonous and repetitious routine of its creation. The artist was producing each of these works for several months or even years, several hours a day, using commonplace materials and tools of broad coverage. To sum it up, the artist closely bound his production with his everyday surroundings and ordinary daily life.

In the present exhibition he is presenting a monumental work entitled The Sky On Earth / Nebo na zemlji in which he undertook the task of diagram-transferring of the night sky on newspaper paper with a ball-pen. The image entitled The visible stars by distance, by the Black Oak observatory in California, USA, available on the internet, served as the outset for his artwork The image shows a data model of the universe, visible to the naked eye, representing only a fragment of all the stars that have been detected by telescopes. The image is divided horizontally and vertically into 475 parts. The artist was drawing diagrams of singular segments onto the pages of daily papers, enlarged in the 1:10 ratio. The fragmentariness and the process of enlarging enabled him to transform the copying into a kind of a daily dairy entry, the process that he persistently continued for long 17 months, 7 hours per day, on average. The final product of the process is the approximately 50 square metres (5,073 m x 9,750 m) big puzzle-like drawing, depicting the star-covered sky, spreading out over the written record of topical events on Earth, as well as the artist’s visual diary from the period.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Erik Mavrič (1979, Koper) graduated in painting in 2004 and in 2008 obtained his M.A. at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, among them at the House of Culture/Hiša kulture, Pivka, 2016; Galerija Dimenzija napredka, Nova Gorica, 2014; Galerija Krško, 2014; Project Room SCCA / Projektna soba SCCA, Ljubljana, 2012. Mavrič had participated at several group exhibitions in such venues as: P74, Ljubljana, Hiša kulture Pivka, Centre for Contemporary Arts/Center sodobnih umetnosti Celje, Galerija Velenje, City Gallery/Mestna galerija Nova Gorica, Galerija Simulaker, Novo mesto, Galerija Insula, Izola. In 2012 he was awarded a special acknowledgement of the expert jury at the 16th Slovene Sculpture Exhibition, and in 2002 he received a Prešeren Award for students.

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of The Sky On Earth by Erik Mavrič, curated by Mojca Grmek. The opening will take place on 6 February at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery in Ljubljana.

The exhibition that will be presented to spectators is the allegory of another world where the colors of reality are deprived. In reddish tones we see its inhabitants with amputated heads, palms and feet. The creatures are incapable of cognition and (self) reflection, they are drawn to the uniformed dolls of the System.

Percussionist Seijiro Murayama was born in 1957 in Nagasaki, Japan. He started performing improvised music in 1972, under some influence of Vinko Globokar and musicologist Fumio Koizumi. A relocation to Paris in 1999 led to fruitful collaborations that extended into contemporary dance, theatre and performance as well as ongoing partnerships with musicians Michel Doneda, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Éric Cordier, Lionel Marchetti and Mattin – among many others. After over a decade in Europe he relocated back to Japan in 2013, since then he is visiting back to Europe occasionally.

His artistic principal is to work with the idea of the plural or inter-disciplinary relationships between music and other disciplines of art: dance, video, paintings, photos, literature etc. In this way, he collaborates with musicians, composers, and sound artists. Improvisation is always the major concern for him, even if it is not his artistic goal. His approach is based on the attention to space and place, to the energy of the audience and to the quality and perception of silence on various levels.

Seijiro Murayama is now back to one of his most beloved residency places at KUD Mreža’s Studio Asylum in Ljubljana, Slovenia where he spent several working visits in the last decade. Concluding his current two-weeks residency, he is giving an afternoon atelier solo concert on 13 January, Saturday at 5 pm. Due to the capacity of the space, we can host only 15 audience members, so please send us an emal to info.kudmreza@gmail.com if you would like to attend the performance.

Beside Seijiro Murayama, this year we are going to have a great number of longer residences at Studio Asylum. In April, South Korean improviser and composer of acoustic, electronic and electroacoustic music and intermedia artist Hunjoo Jung is coming. In May, we are going to host illustrator Katrin Kadelka, and web developer and novelist Mario Siebert, both from New Zealand. In September, comic artist Vincent Pernollet, member of the notorious French collective Le Dernier Cri. In November, we are going to have Finnish illustrator and graphic artist Ulla Aatinen.

The seeds of this heavy-weight group have been planted at this year’s Improcon, and now, American vocalist Linda Sharrock and German saxophonist Mario Rechtern’s new group, Nuclear Dream Weavers Compound, featuring stellar musicians from Slovenia and Serbia – Marko Karlovčec on saxophones, Marina Džukljev on Fender Rhodes, Tomaž Grom and Jošt Drašler on double bass, Aleksandar Škorić and Vid Drašler on drums – is giving its first ever public performance in Ljubljana. This is going to be loud, fast and rather furious!

“The premiere solo presentation of Caroline Sury in Slovenia brings a selection of the highly versatile creative output of this French artist: at Alkatraz Gallery, a selection of originals from her comics will be complemented by the author’s drawings, silkscreen prints and etchings, as well as illustrations and animations. The exhibition places special emphasis on Sury’s cutouts.

Sury draws on the tradition of Art Brut, her works being very straightforward, even wild, yet always highly intimate and personal, often dealing with autobiographical issues, and invariably so with infallible honesty. Even though critics describe her style as uninhibited, even aggressive and daunting, in terms of subject matter many of the emphases attest to the author’s introspective insightfulness as well as her emphatic sensibility in observing life and the society at large. Caroline Sury’s art is easily identifiable: her occasionally pronounced expressivity is often mixed with an artistic expression marked by palpably child-like naivety, teeming with playful and ironic elements. With the recent withdrawal of colour, the author’s increasingly refined forms have become markedly graphical and polished, yet still allowing enough room for sundry details. In her work, Sury often explores women’s issues and women’s eroticism. As the latter is one of the focuses of the exhibition, part of the gallery space will turn into a special ladies’ boudoir to display works dealing with eroticism.

Caroline Sury (1964, Laval) is a graphic artist, illustrator, comic artist and musician with a degree from L’école des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, who also works as editor and producer. Together with Pakito Bolino she was a long-standing editor of Le Dernier Cri, a Marseille-based underground publishing house specialised in various publications and prints from books to graphic art and posters. Sury lives and works in Marseille.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of Voodoo Entartete Kunst by Caroline Sury, on 1 December, Friday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana.

The last concert of this year’s Metabonma concert series is happening on 18 November at 8.00 pm, and we are proud to invite top Slovenian percussion duo Drumartica. The duo will present their Night Trips project. In addition to the music, the project also involves dance and video.

The concept of the project is the result of imagination of the Drumartica members, Simon Klavžar and Jože Bogolin. The film, based on the story of Bogolin, is the work of camerawoman Tia Pavletič. The dance part will be contributed by dancer and choreographer Nataša Živković. The program:

“At the first sight the works of Simon Kocjančič evoke an impression of being hermetic and enigmatic. The viewer quickly notices sparse groups of elements and colour planes. Prevailing are darker hues and undefined organic shapes, difficult to ascribe a meaning to. A talk with the painter does not make the reception any easier. Kocjančič stresses that his painting does not refer to any specific concept, and that his creating does not stem from a desire to communicate a certain message. However, this does not mean that the artist is oriented into a formalistic exploration of colours and shapes and that he is interested only in exploration of the elements of painter’s work. In his most recent works the author remained faithful to the painting process of nuancing of colour masses and planes, which, this time, do not allude to figures, but emphasize a twist into the development of an abstract form.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Simon Kocjančič (1979) graduated in 2007 at a College of Visual Art in Ljubljana. He is active in the fields of painting, drawing, graphic art, photography and art zines production. He has been exhibiting since 2006. In 2017 he participated in a group exhibition Off the hook at Neurotitan gallery in Berlin in colaboration with Dobra vaga gallery. The same year he participated in a group exhibition Zines! Contemporary Zine Production at the International Center of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana.

You are kindly invited to theexhibition opening of “Down & Behind” by Simon Kocjančič on 25 October, Wednesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.

City Of Women, FriForma and Defonija are inviting you to a musically rich, structurally and thematically colourful evening of free improvised music on 12 October, Thursday at 9.30 pm to Klub Gromka in Ljubljana. Our guests come from different environments, having travelled different paths to their own improvising techniques, belonging to different generations, contemporary musical moments and most common social situations. Some of them have already performed together, other combinations we shall hear for the first time.

In six shorter appearances in different combinations, the following artists will be presented:

Experimental film about unwanted childlessness in a world where normative heterosexual relationships dictate who can become parents and in what way. When it comes to reproduction, our merciless bodies reduce us to merely a set sex or given gender. But the longing for children is not limited to our bodies, and the possibility of pregnancy can be gifted, shared and undertaken together.

The author on the project: “The darkness is about being able to focus on our bodies and our body parts, while providing the necessary intimacy required for the film. Nakedness without exhibitionism. Bodies without ownership. Body parts belonging to a large family body instead of individuals. The idea of filming loose body parts, both incoherent, disconnected from each other and intertwined, felt important for the film. Important for us. Important for the notion of the family. That there are many who belong in different ways. I knew early on that the film would be very dark, with inconsistent and moving light, and would by all means be filmed in Super 8. These three distinct starting points formed the basis of the film project in 2011.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Your are kindly invited to the opening of Spermwhore, a film installation by Anna Linder, on 8 October, Sunday at 7 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. The project is a part of 23rd International Festival Of Contemporary Art – City Of Women.

This year KUD Mreža’s FriForma is organizing a vocal workshop by German vocal artist, composer and improviser Ute Wassermann at the 23rd International Festival Of Contemporary Arts – City Of Women in Ljubljana.

The workshop is based on playful exercises in breathing, resonance and articulation. The participants experience their voice as a versatile sound instrument and develop their own catalogue of vocal expressions. Using various improvisational concepts in space, we discover individual voice characters. In addition, the participants will learn various methods of how to develop and present vocal pieces from solo to choral.

The presentation concert by the workshop participants will take place at Klub Gromka on 12 October, Thursday at 9.30 pm, for taking part in the final presentation concert, the two-day workshop participation is required.

Because the number of the participants is limited, you need to register in advance: please send your applications to natasa.serec@gmail.com until 9 October. Fee of the workshop is €50. The event is organized in cooperation with City Of Women and +MSUM.

“Since the very beginning, Boštjan Novak has been an active figure in the process of designing of the ACC Metelkova mesto, as we know it today. The synthesis of common and controversial principles of operation and creation, that is immanent to open spaces akin to Metelkova mesto, reflects in Boštjan Novak’s works. The artist attempts to harmonize the organic with the impulsiveness of the micro space of Metelkova; packed with contradictoriness and diverse creative energies as well as to structure an order in the creative chaos. His artworks and creative process possess an awareness of the importance to observe the world and its phenomena, translated into accordant visual language of fine art.” – Jadranka Plut

You are kindly invited to the opening of The Structure Of Proper Proportions retrospective exhibition by Boštjan Novak on 8 September, Friday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana. The exhibition is a part of the 24th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova.

Metelkova veteran Edvin Dobrilović is returning to Metelkova after a few years break with his exhibition entitled 4×5=20. The exhibition will be displayed at the Night Display Gallery Pešak from 29 August. Welcome to the opening at 8 pm, and meet Edi!

Edvin Dobrilović is an artist, restorer, collector, bricoleur, craftsman, and for many years a tireless creator of many urban artistic interventions. Without doubt, Edvin is the most active artist to whom goes all credit for the aesthetic and friendly community space.

Memories Of Exile is a conceptual installation represented in the form of video, used to create new entities by breaking up, deconstructing, and manipulating (predominantly) fully formed self-sufficient structures by interconnecting, blurring, and voiding.

The installation is a part of Neven Korda’s practice of “pure video”, he started to explore at the turn of the millennium that aims to explore beauty in the expression of the emotional, poetic views of the modern man.

You are kindly invited you to the exhibition opening of Memories Of Exile by Neven Korda on 21 August, Monday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.

Improcon – Congress Of Free Improvised Music, Arts & Thoughts is happening this year between 11-15 August at Veliki Tabor Castle in Desinić, Croatia; first time at a new festival location – a medieval castle on the top of Hum Košnički – which is as exciting and inspiring as the previous one, Spomen Dom was in Kumrovec. Improcon is an international congress and workshop festival where artists – musicians, performers, dancers, visual artists, poets – who applied can collaborate, share ideas and strategies, and do networking with all other participants.

In 2017, Improcon – established in its initial form in 2013 – is hosting more than 70 artists from 17 countries. Some of the festival guests are coming from Japan, Australia, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France and Italy; but most importantly, to stenghten collaborations between artists from neighbouring countries such as Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.

This year’s participants can work on 6-7 in- and outdoor locations at Veliki Tabor Castle, but they are free to explore various rooms and spaces in and around the castle. As in the previous years, the festival programme will be set up on the location, involving the ideas and suggestions of the participant artists. We can expect workshops, lectures and open debates, and numerous sessions of adhoc and planned collaborations.

Improcon is open for public, organizers welcome everyone who is interested in what is happening at Veliki Tabor Castle on the second weekend of August.

Artists who are already in the region before this year’s festival starts, are welcome to participate in a music workshop for various approaches to improvisation and composition through the integration and communication of individuals. The workshop will be held by American vocalist Linda Sharrock and Austrian saxophonist Mario Rechtern. All those who are interested in communication, improvisation and composition are kindly invited to attend the event. The workshop will happen between 7-9 August at Klub Metulj in Bistrica ob Sotli, Slovenia, 15 kms from the festival location at Veliki Tabor Castle.

Come to the 3rd Art Festival Of Recycling And DIY-culture – Reciklart! The event is going to take place in front of Alkatraz Gallery from 11 August, Friday until 13 August, Sunday. Propose us content as the program hasn’t been completed!

This year’s Reciklart – every day between 4 pm and 11 pm – will work the exchange of stuff, which works under the principle: bring, take, replace. Children will be able to attend a workshop for making masks and textile collages. Kids are invited to learn how to transfer photos to wood and textiles and to how to make colorful carpets from discarded t-shirts.

Organizers are also planning a DIY product fair, art auction, concert, projection of a documentary movie, circus show and surely some other interesting events will pop up.

Participation in the festival is free, but voluntary contributions are always very welcome.

Learn more about the program and registration for the workshops at our Facebook event.

“Drawing Jam Session (Risarski jam session) is a project of a group of artists started in 2016. The majority of their meetings since last October took place in the Alkatraz Gallery, during that time not operating as a public exhibition space, but as an intimate-social space intended for socializing and creation. A simple co-operational frame was set up: regular meetings at the agreed location, employment of basic drawing utensils, attempt to combine and merge different artistic approaches within a singular drawing, all in the attempt to emphasize the artefact as the reason for the continuation of a dialogue, and not as the final stop of the process. The project resulted in the What Is Yours, Nothing Is Yours! exhibition.

Group creation stems from the desire and urge of the artists to socialize, exchange skills, open up to new creative approaches, and also to develop one’s own, individual artistic language. Most of the artists involved regard the so modified creative process as the key element for their co-operation. The drawings are, utmost, regarded as experiments that occasionally or for some develop and transcend into completed works; like with every creative process, these two categories alternate.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of What Is Yours; Nothing Is Yours! on 5 July, Wednesday at 6 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana. The exhibition is curated by Anabel Černohorski and Sebastian Krawczyk.

“With her installation Brina Ivanetič continues her sculptural research into the issue of absence and what is that visualizes the absence. Embodying this particular absence, her works are caught in an ambivalent and inherently sculptural interplay of the material and immaterial, where the sculptural object is shaped by a trail and an impression of some presence. Amidst the consideration there is often a human body, re-defined into its negative form to evade from a classical understanding of figural depiction. A somewhat peculiar trail of a human body is also what the current installation brings. When we enter the dimmed cube of the spatial installation, we gaze at the alternatingly illuminated bust masks having been used in cancer-patient therapies at the oncological department. Into the artwork, in this manner, a hunch of death creeps, further thematised by the sound of several different breathings and the alternating light. Masks as a cast, a shell of some patient in a grave moment as well as the recording of the breathing of random persons as their trail in some random moment – both find themselves caught within a joined frame, in a tense relation. The segments and the trails – with their presence – evoke the absence of some human presence – the people who have left these traces behind.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of Breath-In / Breath-Out by Brina Ivanetič. The event will take place on 7 June, Wednesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana. The exhibition is curated by Iza Pevec.

“We Animate” is an annual project of KUD Mreža and Vodmat Kindergarten. We are looking forward to the premiere of four children’s animations which is taking place on 30 May, Tuesday at 3.30 pm and 4.30 pm at Slovenian Cinematheque in Ljubljana. The animations were created by the children of Vodmat Kindergarten with stop-motion technique.

We are inviting you to the opening exhibition of Marina Milev Tail Contest on 26 May, Friday 9 pm by the tower opposite of Night Display Gallery Pešak, AKC Metelkova mesto in Ljubljana.

This time, visitors will be cordially invited to participate by casting a vote for the selection of the most beautiful exhibits tails which will be announced on the last day of the exhibition. As a continuation of the project will be followed by street art intervention performed by the artist in honor of winning the tail carried out in Belgrade.

“Election rallies thus resemble animalistic mating rituals and the inducing of fear, aimed at finding a partner or defeating natural foes. For that purpose, animals use different parts of their body, but most often their tails. Some mammals use their tails for balancing, maneuvering in battle, climbing with greater ease and showing their emotions. Birds usually use their tail for courting, while some insects carry lethal poison in their tails. All these tail – derived functions correspond to many skills and behaviors displayed in political rallies. In the Serbian language, a tail also represents some sort of burden or unsolved problem from the past.

This project “Tail Contest” portrays in an illustrative manner the banality of rhetoric in pre-election campaigns. By-passers and local citizens will have to use their electoral right, based on their visual impression, to circle the number in front of the most beautiful tail shown in this exhibition. They will be encouraged to put the voting paper in the voting box. On the last day of the exhibition, the winning tail will be announced. As a follow -up project, the Author will make a long lasting tribute to the winning tail in some form of street art in Belgrade.” – pesakpesak.wordpress.com

Borderless Dissonance – a cross-national creative platform and international concert series – is presenting its final international trio in Ljubljana on 18 May, Thursday at 8 pm at Vodnikova Domačija Šiška with the participation of Hungarian saxophonist Gergő Kováts, German-Austrian double bass player Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka and Slovenian drummer Vid Drašler.

KUD Mreža’s Borderless Dissonance events are taking place in Budapest, Vienna and Ljubljana between 10 April and 18 May with the collaboration of three Slovenian, three Austrian and three Hungarian improvisers who have never worked together before.

Alkatraz Gallery’s The Country Gentlemen exhibition toys with diverse perception of nature while trying to warn of the dichotomy: on the one hand we have a rational view on nature, always in search of how to master it, on the other hand, however, there are traditional societies who do not know of gentlemen and are building their life in co-existence with nature.

Both artists, Goran Medjugorac and Art Larson use several approaches in order to grasp the idea of how to capture nature in a medium. In their research they worship nature and their inspiration draws on romantic ideas of discovery and contemplation on the petiteness of a human before nature. It always stands above a human.

Painter Goran Medjugorac within the monumental drawing – as an autonomous medium – by mathematical patterns attempts to synthesize a direct reflection of nature. Preciseness, vitality and discipline are detected in his strokes. The medium of drawing enables him liveliness, inconclusiveness, openness and construction of an art form that in the process of creation stumbles upon limitation and the awareness of the imperfection of the human in relation to nature.

Art Larson makes a video recording of tree life, which in comparison to a human life, appears slow and infinite. During the observation, he keeps facing his own physical weakness and limitation, so immanent to our existence.

You are kindly invited you to the exhibition opening of The Country Gentlemen by Goran Medjugorac and Art Larson on 9 May, Tuesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.

Borderless Dissonance – a cross-national creative platform and international concert series – is presenting its second international trio in Ljubljana on 5 May, Friday at 8 pm at Vodnikova Domačija Šiška with the participation of Austrian saxophonist Markus Krispel, Slovenian-Austrian double bass player Matija Schellander and Hungarian drummer Szilveszter Miklós.

The Borderless Dissonance events are taking place in Budapest, Vienna and Ljubljana between 10 April and 18 May with the collaboration of three Slovenian, three Austrian and three Hungarian musicians who have never worked together before.

In addition to the second “Boderless” trio we are thrilled to host the duo called Not The Music with clarinet player Philippe Lauzier and bassist Éric Normand – both from Québec, Canada – who are presenting their re-released debut album entitled Do.

Offspring of Reciklart Festival is happening on 21 April, Friday at 3.30 pm and on 22 April, Saturday at 3.30 pm, and we are kindly inviting children (older than 4 years old) to join our creative workshop.

The workshop – which is going to take place at the courtyard of Metelkova in front of Alkatraz Gallery – will teach you what mosaic is, and how and from what materials we can create it. After we learn this, we will start to create the mosaic on the walls of Alkatraz Gallery.

Parents and children are more than welcome to bring various objects – old toys, cups, plates, products made of clay and similar objects – which will be used for assembling the mosaic.

The workshop is tutored by Nevena Aleksovski and Danijela Zajc, and is free of charge.

KUD Mreža’s Borderless Dissonance – a cross-national creative platform and international concert series – is presenting its first international trio on 12 April, Wednesday at 8 pm at Vodnikova Domačija Šiška with the participation of Austrian violinist and composer Irene Kepl, Slovenian double bass player Jošt Drašler and Hungarian drummer Gergely Kovács.

The Borderless Dissonance events are taking place in Budapest, Vienna and Ljubljana between 10 April and 18 May with the collaboration of three Slovenian, three Austrian and three Hungarian improvisers who have never worked together before.

KUD Mreža’s third FriForma event this year is coming up on 6 April, Thursday at 9 pm at Klub Gromka with the debut performance of a brand new international trio proposed by FriForma: Argentinian reedman, electronic musician and conceptualist sound artist Lucio Capece joins Japanese electronic feedback virtuoso Daichi Yoshikawa and Swedish percussionist Henrik Olsson to play their first time ever trio concert together in this particular line-up.

Also on the bill the incredible harp-percussion duo of Ljubljana-based musicians Eduardo Raon and Vid Drašler whose performance was one of the most marvellous sets last September at the 7. Bučno festival organized by Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin in Lesno Brdo.

“The exhibition brings together three people: artists Valerie Wolf Gang and Eriz Moreno and the curator Kateřina Lenzová. They personally met here in Ljubljana in 2016 which resulted in a joint project. The unifying theme of this project is the subject of artistic mobility which has currently a significant impact on artistic practices and interdisciplinary co-operations.

The works presented at the exhibition were made during international artistic residencies. They demonstrate how a new and foreign environment affects artistic creation and the artists. Staying abroad involves constant confrontation of opinions, attitudes and values, providing the artists with a rich source of inspiration and new experiences. In their works the artists reflect not only the world around them, but also their position in it.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition The Clash by Eriz Moreno and Valerie Wolf Gang on 4 April, Tuesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. You are kindly invited also to the discussion at the SCCA Project Room: “Artist Abroad – Discussion About Artistic Mobility And Its Influence On Art” with the artists and the curator on 3 April, Monday at 6 pm.

“Why do you show your tits? What kind of connection is there between banks, trouble at the borders and feminism? Such radical photos will not achieve anything!”

The Uprising Social Workers’ collective wants to say goodbye to their exhibition at Alkatraz Gallery in an interactive way, so we have prepared a guided tour which will present their work and its message. You are kindly invited to join the I Spit On Revolution! exhibition closing guided tour on 30 March, Thursday at 5.30 pm. The event will happen in Slovene language, with the possibility of translation into English.

KUD Mreža’s event series for classical and contemporary composed music Metabonma is excited to present the performance of the Furiant String Quartet at Klub Gromka on 14 March, Tuesday at 9 pm.

The Furiant String Quartet was formed in 2011, its members – Stefano Mesaglio on first violin, Vlad Popescu on second violin, Gregor Hrabar on viola, and Nika Švarc on cello – have studied at the Kärntner Landeskonservatorium in Klagenfurt with Elisabeth Fister, and in October 2013, the four musicians were accepted in the class of Professor Eberhard Feltz at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin.

This time classical composed music comes to a punk-rock club with pieces written for string quartet by composers such as Joseph Haydn, Dmitri DmitriyevichShostakovich and Ludwig van Beethoven. Metabonma revives in a more settled and relaxed form, and presents accessible classical music for those who may not have been close to these historical, but timeless classics.

An old acquaintance on the Ljubljana free jazz and improvised music scene, Martin Küchen is returning after a few years break, this time with his Swedish friend and collaborator Herman Müntzing as duo Scheibenhonig. At ŠKUC Gallery they are going to present and promote their debut album Rop På Hjälp which got released recently on Inexhaustible Editions.

The opening set of the evening will be presented by the viola-cello duo of Szilárd Mezei and Albert Márkos. Mezei’s playing is full of dynamism, sense of transition between various musical expressions – so what we can expect here is a full-blooded, exciting and highly concentrated mind-game with his long-time collegue, classically trained cellist, Albert Márkos.

“The Uprising Social Workers, at the current Red Dawns Festival, present their third feminist calendar, this time in the form of an exhibition of photographs, paintings, sculptures, videos and texts that have been created in the four years of our activity. The exhibition opening at Alkatraz Gallery will be accompanied by a performance.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition I Spit On Revolution! by The Uprising Social Workers collective, followed by an opening performance, on 9 March, Thursday at 7 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. The project is co-organized by KUD Anarhiv and part of Red Dawns – 18th International Feminist And Queer Festival.

One more week to go! Red Dawns – 18th International Feminist And Queer Festival will happen this year between 9-11 March at various locations at Metelkova and Tovarna Rog. For more info and detailed programme please check the festival’s official website.

Croatian artist Dajana Durić’s The Residence Of The Void exhibition will finish with a guided tour hosted by the artist on 3 March, Friday at 6 pm. Dajana Durić is going to tell us about the background of the project: ideas behind the design as well as some interesting details about the long process of creating her displayed artwork. The gallery team is keen to ask her about connections between her original site-specific installation and the Far-Eastern concepts of harmony and peace, and also about want do they mean to her personally. You are kindly invited to join the discussion and the special guided tour on Friday at Alkatraz Gallery.

The fourth season of concert series for composed classical and contemporary music Metabonma is starting with the performance of trumpet player Aleš Klančar and percussionist Jože Bogolin at Klub Gromka on 27 February.

Ales Klančar is regular member of the Portuguese Remix Ensemble Casa da Musica and the Dutch ensemble Insomnio, he also co-operates with other foreign ensembles for contemporary classical music such as: MusikFabrik (Germany), KlangForum (Austria), Contrechamps (Switzerland), Ars Nova (Sweden) and Athelas Sinfonietta (Denmark).

Jože Bogolin plays – as a member and soloist – with various orchestras and chamber ensembles such as: EUYO Wind Ensemble, EUYO Symphony Orchestra, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, RTV Orchestra of Ljubljana, SNG Opera-Ballet Orchestra Ljubljana, Komische Oper Berlin, Australian Chamber, Perkumania, Slowind and Drumartica. Together with Simon Klavžar he curates the program of Metabonma.

“Dajana Durić is an artist yet unbeknownst to the Slovenian audience. However, since her artistic language is original and perfected, she will certainly attract the public with her exhibition in Alkatraz Gallery. She does not conceal her interests under the veil of poetics, she prefers to articulate them clearly: she likes to arrange spaces that allow the presentation of situations representing transience of human moods and the multi-layeredness of memories. The spaces that she constructs are distinguished not only by their visual sensibility, but also by the strong presence of scent, sound and sensation which contribute to a more active perception of the exhibition.

It is interesting to observe how her artistic message is not shaped only by the imagination and an original multi-layered creativity, but also diligent work, always the result of the long process of the birth of an art piece. Her exhibitions require several months or even years of creation, the Residence Of The Void project took a year to complete – a tenacious work thus represents an important component of her artistic language.

The site-specific installation, exhibited in our gallery, will be composed of 72 canvases in the dimension of 60×60 cm, onto which a collage made from tea bags will be attached, and which, during the exhibition, scatter on the floor, thus changing the arrangement of the installation in the gallery.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition Residence Of The Void by Dajana Durić on 10 February, Friday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.

KUD Mreža is thrilled to kick off its FriForma event series’ 2017 season with the performance of the Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin and John Butcher on 8 February at Klub Gromka.

The string trio from the German-speaking part of Switzerland joined forces for the first time with their English guest on tenor and soprano saxophone. Violinist Harald Kimmig, cellist Alfred Zimmerlin and double bassist Daniel Studer decided that their tight improvising unit needs a new challenge with guest musicians: they invited British saxophonist John Butcher and their collaboration reached a new height. One can immediately hear the spiritual bond that developed between the trio and the Brit.

The Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin together with John Butcher abandon the classical realm. Strings are bowed, pulled, struck and scratched, the entire instrument, from neck to tailpiece, is used as a resonating body. A master of circular breathing and overblowing techniques, John Butcher manages to elicit tones cause listeners to ask themselves which instrument was responsible for a particular sound. A must hear!

“The inquiring about the concept of border seems to be a never-ending quest for identity and understanding of relations with the other. It should suffice to look at the art of the previous centuries where human being is placed on this side and interpreted as visible, definite, and mortal and still unsteady even in the most schematic perception. In renaissance he is someone who peeps behind the mystical curtain while trying to grasp essence of God, in romanticism on the other hand gazes in to distance, across the hazy horizon above the globe, and behind which expects unimaginably great power of Nature to reside. Modern age change perspective on time and everything seems to be absent and present at the same time. The future, the past and the present seem to influence each other by laws of physics, not mythical/mystical principles.

Selected artists from Slovenia and Austria are active in different fields of art and create in a various techniques. Specific to all is crossing borders or in some cases walking on the edge, which doesn’t occur in a formal way, this is today hardly possible, but in the sense of content. The artists constantly examine the known and walk a step further. They widen their own personal story through which, the culture that is common in a civilization is widen as well. And especially it is the examined the question how much can a human be human, before is dehumanised. Be it in body or spirit.

The exhibition The Man At The Border is conceived as an open, observant and pondering platform about borders that we are setting nowadays in a symbolic as well as physical sense and in this way reflects wider contemporary artistic and social phenomena. The artworks are addressing the issues of the quotidian; of artistic research and the system we are integrated in, modes and conditions of production as well as a wider social reality that the artists render by the means of various media and contents.

You are kindly invited to the opening of group exhibition The Man At The Border on 24 January, Tuesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. The exhibition will be opened by director of Austrian Cultural Forum, Mag. Marie-Thérèse Hermges.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Regarded as one of the most influential percussionist of the last 30 years, Andrea Centazzo has performed at the most important festivals and concert series both in Europe and the United States as soloist, in combination with other artists, and as conductor. Early in the eighties, and later in the last few years he has been associated with many seminal percussionists, playing duets, trios and ensembles with Andrew Cyrille, Barry Altschul, Tony Oxley, Paul Lytton, Paul Lovens, Pierre Favre and many others.

Born and raised in Italy, but naturalized American and living in Los Angeles since 1992, Centazzo after more than a decade dedicated mainly to composing, conducting and video-making went back in 2000 to his first love, the solo percussion concert. In his solo program called No Boundaries Centazzo once again blends his percussion, playing on a set of over 200 instruments, with cymbals, gongs, electronics, computer sequencing and digital sampling, bringing to the listener the emotion of a new sonic adventure in jazz, world and contemporary avant-garde music. His melodic composing along with his ostinato patterns and his mastery of percussion improvising create a music beyond any expectation.

Regarded as one of the most influential percussionist of the last 30 years, Andrea Centazzo has performed at the most important festivals and concert series both in Europe and the United States as soloist, in combination with other artists, and as conductor. Early in the eighties, and later in the last few years he has been associated with many seminal percussionists, playing duets, trios and ensembles with Andrew Cyrille, Barry Altschul, Tony Oxley, Paul Lytton, Paul Lovens, Pierre Favre and many others.

Born and raised in Italy, but naturalized American and living in Los Angeles since 1992, Centazzo after more than a decade dedicated mainly to composing, conducting and video-making went back in 2000 to his first love, the solo percussion concert. In his solo program called No Boundaries Centazzo once again blends his percussion, playing on a set of over 200 instruments, with cymbals, gongs, electronics, computer sequencing and digital sampling, bringing to the listener the emotion of a new sonic adventure in jazz, world and contemporary avant-garde music. His melodic composing along with his ostinato patterns and his mastery of percussion improvising create a music beyond any expectation.

“There is an unknown music. Hidden, to be discovered. Deciphered. There is a past, a now, and a coming. And there is something else. Out of time. Here are two spines – backbones of improvisation. Here’s the vast chatter. There’s an unknown music known to our inner ears. Here are fingerboards and jaws. Amplifying the balance between falling and not falling. Here are Tristan Honsinger and Joel Grip. A sonorous dance of extreme troubadours.”

Tristan Honsinger is a cello player active in free jazz and free improvisation. He is perhaps best known for his long-running collaboration with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and guitarist Derek Bailey. He studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, but by the seventies, the Trans-American had moved to Amsterdam and formed the Instant Composers Pool with drummer Han Bennink and radical pianist Misha Mengelberg. With this avant-jazz group, his music transcended the classical conservatory background he had and he began to incorporate wild, free improvisation, jazz, and European folk music into his cannon, not to mention a kinship with Bertolt Brecht theatre, which would put an edge on performances and recordings that take on experimental strategies, some of which include what could be considered violent attacks on the instrument. The range of emotions that is covered in a piece by Tristan Honsinger is striking in that it is very accessible for so-called avant-garde music. In the eighties, he recorded for the prestigious FMP label and in the nineties, for numerous recording companies, including Winter & Winter, I.C.P., and legendary jazz archivists Hat Hut from Switzerland.

For a number of years now, energetic double bassist, filmmaker and producer Joel Grip has played an important role for the new scenes of improvised music in Europe. As founder of Umlaut Records, he opened up for creative forms of organizing collectives of musicians and promoting their music internationally. Since 2003 he has been one of the main organizers of Hagenfesten in Dala-Floda, Sweden, a stand-alone festival, and quite frankly possibly the most pleasant venue for free improvised music not only in Sweden but in the whole of Europe. Few other places offer quite the same endearing combination of sophisticated musical risk-taking, and up-beat, social get-together. Grip’s musicianship is informed by a similar knack for welding musical sophistication with social communication, often with an analog film camera at hand. With a handful of short films Joel Grip met mexican filmmaker Mauricio Hernández and shortly the film production company Umlicht was established. They are right now working on their third and forth feature film together. Umdicht is amplifying the pencil of Joel Grip’s hand, partly through the irregular issue of Lösa Blad and partly in the future release of books.

“Textile art has regained the attention of artistic public in the past few years. Guerrilla knitting and production of authentic textile designers are present at numerous outdoor and indoor public spaces. Even though textile crafts are still understood as a domain where women traditionally prevail, a closer look into the past reveals quite a different story. Several textile professions such as carpet-making are mostly performed by men. Closer to glory and fortune we come across tailors and male fashion designers today. The presence of male textile artists in the contemporary art should thus not surprise us.

The conceptual outset of the exhibition of textile portraits of Jan Bejšovec and Anže Ermenc is based on their differences of experience and interests. The artists are of different nationality and age. On top of that, they have never met each other. At the time when Jan Bejšovec, from Berlin, first arrived in Ljubljana, Anže Ermenc was leaving Ljubljana for Manchester. Despite numerous differences they are related by their mutual interest in contemporary textile arts, so they have both accepted the invitation of the Alkatraz Gallery and joined their efforts in a way we had not expected.

The exhibition will be the scene of confrontation of different beliefs and views on textile arts, at the same time also a kind of a dialogue of the two artists of different experiences. The audience will hence have an opportunity to observe two very different styles of textile arts. While Ermenc employs his embroidery as a tool when dealing with uneasiness and the reflection of his own personal experiences with the aid of satire and in his wider (fashionable) scope questions social determination of the value and visibility of unfashionable and unpopular individuals, Bejšovec prefers to focus on portraying controversial personalities from the history and politics in hope to set up conflict situations in political, and not personal sense. The attempt of Bejšovec and Ermenc displays an unusual versatility of contemporary textile arts.” – galerijalkatraz.org

You are kindly invited to the opening of the The Other Self – A Textile Perspective On Exploring Identity And Belonging exhibition by Jan Bejšovec and Anže Ermenc on 29 November, Tuesday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery.